


Meet Me In Phoenix

by lokilickedme



Series: Troika Apocalyptica [2]
Category: Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Chem!Tom and the Badass Heyworths kick ass and don't bother taking names, F/M, Mild Language, One True Pairing, Separation, Suspense, Zombie Apocalypse, brief allusion to masturbation, just kidding, never give up even when a zombie has its teeth in your neck, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-07-28 09:49:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7635625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to See You After The Apocalypse, telling the story from Chem!Tom's point of view.</p><p>When the Badass Heyworths get separated during a zombie apocalypse, Tom, Cara, and Pop make their way through the carnage to find Anja, Chris, and the babies.  True love leads the way, etc.  A Chemical AU featuring the characters from that story.</p><p>Trying a new format with this one - short chapters instead of one long oneshot.  I'll post one a day for a week until it's caught up to where I'm at.</p><p>Enjoy :)</p><p>**PART TWO OF THE TROIKA APOCALYPTICA SERIES**<br/>(Part 1 is entitled See You After The Apocalypse and is posted in its entirety.  Part 3 is by request and will come at a later date)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Door Was Open When Hell Froze Over

 

 

 

"Get out the back, Pop is on his way. Go go _go!"_

 

I don't know why people listen to me...they just always have, for some reason.  And this was one time that I was truly glad to see everyone around me jump to attention and do what the fuck I told them, because the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end and I knew, _knew,_ something bad was going down.

When the first of the dead, undead, infected, whatever they were started ambling up the street toward the pub, I wished for once that feeling had been wrong.

 

My wife and oldest daughter headed straight for the back like I told them, grabbing up my two younger girls on their way through while my best friend brought up the rear, keeping his eyes on them like I knew he would.  He didn't even have to be told - if I wasn't right there with them, he would be, and I knew without a second of doubt that if we all got separated somehow, he would protect my family to the death.

As I closed the blinds to the front windows and saw those strange sick monsters begin to fill the streets, I realized that _to the death_ might not be such an unrealistic thing before long.

 

 

My father met us in the alley behind the pub with a truck and a pile of guns on the front seat that none of us questioned.  It didn't even seem ludicrous at that moment, when we were all piling in and getting the kids buckled...at some point between slow dancing with my wife to Rod Stewart and the emergency sirens going off, everyone's perception of normal had changed, as quickly and smoothly as the flipping of a switch.

And just like that, our new reality became real.

 

 

All we could think to do was head to the mountains.  The population was less dense, there was more wilderness than civilization, and our cabin seemed like a fairly solid place to hole up and wait the whole thing out.  What we didn't know was that the epidemic had started at the northern coast, and Big Bear and Arrowhead had already been hit hard.  But it didn't matter, because in just a matter of hours the entire state of California was taken down by this...whatever it was.  We were slightly better off than everyone else, but not by much.

We were barely in the cabin long enough to load the guns and take up defensive positions before the infected started coming through the woods.

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


	2. Head For The Hills, Start Racking The Kills

 

 

 

It was obvious pretty quickly that we were going to be overtaken, so I put the baby in Anja's arms and grabbed Layla.  "Lock the door behind us," I ordered Chris on our way out.  Once I heard the bolt fall into place, I leaned down and kissed Anja's head, and she looked up at me with a blind fear in her eyes that I knew she would fight so that she could do whatever needed done.

I also knew she wasn't going to like what I was about to do, so I didn't give her a chance to protest.

"Ready?" I asked, watching out of the corner of my eye as zombies - it was all I could think to call them - began moving toward us from the trees. "Keep your eyes on me and don't stop.  You hear me, baby? _Don't stop."_

She nodded, and as soon as I said _Let's go,_ she was right behind me the whole way.

 

 

The root cellar was cold and damp but it had a thick, heavy door and the biggest damn deadbolt lock I'd ever seen on it.  There was battery power for a couple of days and enough food and water for several weeks at least.  I knew they would be safe there, my wife and my two little girls.  They'd be alone, but they'd be safe.  I kissed them each and told them I loved them, then I shut them in and waited till I heard the deadbolt slide shut.  As soon as that heavy thud hit my ears, I stepped away from the door and whistled.

Several zombies that had been hanging around nearby were drawn to the noise and came ambling toward me.  I had no idea how fast these things could move, but operating on the assumption that they hadn't been sick or dead for very long, I guessed they could be pretty sprightly with the proper motivation.  I wanted them away from the root cellar and away from my family.  So I took the knife out of my back pocket that I'd grabbed from the kitchen on our way out, and started taunting the fuckers.

One thing I found out pretty quick.  The fuckers didn't _like_ being taunted.

 

 

I barely made it back to the cabin, to be brutally honest.  There were way more of them out there than I'd guessed, just hanging around waiting, and once the few I'd spotted started coming for me, the rest just appeared from out of fucking nowhere.

And there I was, with a kitchen knife.

I hadn't brought a gun because I hadn't wanted to risk the noise bringing too many to handle, but I was seriously rethinking it as a questionable life choice when the first five or so got in between me and the quick way back.  That left me with only one remaining option - and that was to hightail it through the woods, in the dark, basically unarmed unless I wanted to get into close combat with something that didn't seem to have any qualms about biting a few chunks out of me.  But the woods were thick and by the time I stumbled out into the clearing at the bend of the creek and could see the light of the cabin, I had no idea if the cuts and scrapes all over me were from the bushes and branches...or from the two undead I'd had to take out with my little kitchen knife.

 

I showed Chris the ragged looking injury on my right wrist and he looked at me like I'd just told him he was going to have to put his dog down.

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


	3. There's No Crying In Zombie Slaying

 

 

There was no protest when I told Chris what I needed him to do.  Maybe he was glad to have drawn the long straw and been assigned the lesser of two evils - stay and put a bullet between my eyes when the time came, or get Anja and the babies to a safe place and wait for whichever of us made it out.

I didn't give him the choice to make.  It was my thanks to him for all the years of loyal friendship he'd given me.

It was the very least I could do.

I pushed the truck keys into his left hand and a loaded gun into his right.

"Take care of them."

He nodded, and I knew it was probably the last time I would ever see him.

 

 

I felt gut sick as the tail lights bounced down the mountain in the dark, taking my wife and kids away.  But I couldn't go with them, and I couldn't let them stay.  If I was going to turn, it was the absolute last thing I wanted any of them to see...and so I watched until the little red dots of light were gone, and then I turned to my oldest daughter beside me and gave her the cockiest grin I could muster.

"Ready for the next wave?"

She tipped her rifle, popping out the empty shell casing from the round she'd just fired through the window.  She looked at me as she was reloading, and I could tell that under the shock, beyond the disbelief, behind the horror of the situation we had somehow found ourselves in, she was kind of enjoying it.

I wasn't even ashamed to admit to myself that I was, too.

"My health bar is full, stamina is at max, ammo is full capacity.  Bring the next wave."

My girl.

 

 

I didn't end up turning.  Three days later we were still in the cabin, mostly overrun but keeping the hordes at bay just enough to take turns napping and eating and doing whatever else we needed to do to stay alive, waiting it out and surviving till finally they started slowing down.  Another three days and they dropped to a trickle.  After a week we started venturing out to see if we could lure the stragglers out of the woods, picking them off as they appeared, until finally one day nothing stumbled out of the woods to greet us when we whistled.

Pop and Cara had finally stopped giving me nervous sideways looks, watching my every move, finding excuses to touch me to check me for fever or inspect my hands for tremors.  There had been a tense afternoon on the third day when some dust from a box of rifle shells had sent me into a coughing fit and the next few hours were spent with me and Cara shooting zombies through the front and back windows while Pop stood between us with his gun pointed at my head - but once my gimpy lungs settled and the coughing stopped, that was pretty much the end of the worry about me.

Now we just had to worry about getting out of the cabin somehow.

And after that, finding Chris and the rest of my family.

 

 

We left the cabin on foot, carrying as little as we could in a backpack and a couple of hastily-made slings fashioned out of the curtains we'd been hiding behind for the last two weeks, our rifles slung over our shoulders like the last remaining survivors of a doomed platoon trying to get home through enemy lines.  The woods were filled with corpses that we tried not to look too closely at as we stepped over them on our way down the mountain...we knew we had killed fathers, sons, mothers...everyone out there was someone, or had been, before they got sick.  It could have been any of us.

It had almost been me.

There was no urge to kick any of them in the head as we tromped past.  We'd done enough already.  Pop must have known what I was thinking because he put his hand on my shoulder.

"They were already dead, mahiskatan.  We just helped them go down quicker."

I must have nodded, watching Cara trot on ahead of us to the road.  Pop started singing, something I recognized from when I was a kid, and under the words I heard the sound of his knife putting silence to a noise I'd been subconsciously ignoring.  But now that it wasn't there anymore, I realized what it had been.

_We're just helping them go down quicker._

 

 

 

To be continued...


	4. Time Moves Fast, So Walk Faster

 

 

We'd been on the road for a few days before Cara finally said what we'd all been thinking.

"Do you think they made it?"

Pop and I didn't say anything for a long time, but Cara didn't stop looking at me, expecting an answer, and I knew she would just keep on until I gave it.

"Yeah.  They made it."  I flicked the stick I'd been fiddling with into the fire, watching as the sparks sprayed up like orange confetti.  "I feel her."

Pop nodded, stretching out on his back on the other side of the fire to go to sleep.  I was on first watch and told Cara to turn in...she stared at the fire for a little while longer, then screwed the cap back on her water bottle and sighed.  But it wasn't a sigh of resignation.  If it was anything, it was weariness.  We'd been walking for days, stopping only briefly to rest, traveling at night as much as day until the power grid went completely down and we lost the street lights to guide us.  She curled up next to me, hugging my leg for a pillow.

"I feel them too, dad.  They made it."

 

 

After two weeks on the road, we finally started finding signs that we were headed in the right direction.  Other survivors crossed paths with us from time to time, telling us about refugee camps that had been set up across the border in the southernmost states.  We'd been avoiding taking abandoned vehicles - it felt like stealing, and we were keeping to the unpopulated areas of the national forest for the most part so there really weren't that many cars just sitting around available.   _When this is over people will want their stuff back_ , Pop insisted.  So we walked, and whenever we took supplies or used things we found along the way, we left thank-you messages.  It made us feel human in the big fucking middle of the incomprehensible mess the world had become around us.

 _No matter what,_ Pop said, _we don't lose our humanity.  We're not animals unless we choose to be._

 

 

A couple of weeks turned into a couple of months, and we hit the halfway point where we knew we were going to have to make a decision.  Come out of the woods and follow the main roads to the border and start searching for the camps, or stay in the relative safety of the national forest and cross over, hoping the adjoining states were clean.  If Chris and Anja and the girls were in one of the camps, surely there would be an accounting of who was where for when relatives came searching.

But what if he hadn't taken them across the border?  If they were still in California, we could have walked right past them already. There was no way of knowing and no way to find out.  There was no phone service, neither cells or landlines.  No electricity.  Very few people, that we'd seen anyway.  For all we knew, we'd passed them back at San Bernadino, and now here we were hundreds of miles south of there.

I couldn't let myself think about any of that.  Something kept pulling me further south, and I couldn't bring myself to ignore it.  Pop and Cara trusted me, and I trusted Anja.

I knew it was her.

 

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


	5. When The Day Is Done

 

 

I had a lot of time to think while we were walking.  Mostly I thought about Anja and the babies, what they were doing, were they okay without me.  Chris was with them - the one person I trusted the most in this world.  He wouldn't let anything happen to them, and if anything did, it would be because he was dead and couldn't stop it.  But I knew Chris was hard to kill, so there was no doubt in my mind that he was with them, taking them wherever they needed to be to be safe.  Carrying my kids, looking after my wife.  How long had it been now?  A long time, I realized with a stab of sadness.  Long enough that Anja probably thought I was dead.  I let my mind go there, a time or two...would she accept my death and turn to Chris for comfort?  Or would she refuse to ever believe it and wait, possibly forever, for me to find her?

I couldn't find it in me to be angry at the possibility of her and my best friend, in each other's arms.  I had given her to him to take care of.  Part of me, some perverse, forgiving part, wanted them to be wrapped up in each other, to be taking solace in what they no doubt felt were stolen touches.  Chris deserved her, after what he had to do...after what I made him do.  And Anja deserved to be cared for.  They couldn't possibly think I was still alive, after all this time.

I couldn't stop myself thinking about them - the two people I loved the most, aside from my own children.  I'd slept with both of them so many times, it was easy to imagine them making love.  I knew Chris would be dominating her lovingly, whispering to her soothingly as he took her, that Anja would be sweetly submissive but losing herself to the act.  Probably with her eyes closed, pretending it wasn't her husband's best friend above her, that the arms around her and the body rubbing against her were mine, not his.

Anja would do that.  But I also knew she would open her eyes at some point and force herself to acknowledge him as who he was, because he didn't deserve to have her make believe he was someone else.

It was almost unbearable and I didn't realize my hand had gone down the front of my pants until I heard Cara do that little snort laugh of hers.  When I opened my eyes she was picking up her blanket and stomping off.

"Sorry babe, I didn't know you were awake."

"No problem, dad."  She stopped and stared at the fire for a minute, then turned halfway, not looking at me.  "Nobody expects you not to miss her that way, you know.  It's okay."

 

 

A few days out of El Cajon we came up on a train that was moving so slowly we could walk along beside it.  It appeared to be empty, just wandering, lost, following its tracks because it didn't know what else to do.

Sort of like us. 

Pop ran on ahead to the engine, coming back after a minute, shrugging.  "Nobody's driving."

"Then I guess it's ours."

We hopped on, moving cautiously from car to car, checking for infected.  It seemed totally abandoned so we lay down in one of the box cars with the big side door open, just enjoying the luxury of resting and still getting down the road.  After a while I turned to Pop;  he was sitting on the edge of the car, eyes closed, sniffing the air and seeming oddly content.  I wondered if he was in his element, if this - this wildness, this lack of structured life, was in his nature.  The first time I'd seen him as an adult, he was wearing a business suit, his long hair pulled back neatly into a ponytail.  Now he was wearing a dirty plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows and torn jeans, his hair loose and messy.  We were all disheveled, it seemed everyone was these days...but on Pop it didn't look pitiful.  Even the rough scar down his left cheek - the result of a late night camp invasion where we very nearly met our makers - seemed like it belonged there.

I knew then, sitting next to my father, the man I had lost when I was seven, that I finally knew him.  He looked at me sideways and smiled and suddenly all those lost years didn't seem to matter so much.

"Do you know how to operate one of these things?"

His smile got bigger.  "No, but give me a few minutes."

 

With Pop in the engine giving us a little speed, Cara and I made our way to the passenger cars, looking for anything we could use for the next leg of the trip.  We couldn't stay on the train too long or we would go past where we needed to be, so she climbed up onto the top of one of the front cars to watch for landmarks while I took a nap.  It was only a few minutes, but it felt like hours and I woke up feeling better.  I'd been doubting my ability to track Anja, losing the trail so often that I started picking fights with peacefully passing zombies that didn't have any interest in us.  They always turned violent once you caught their attention, so it was a somewhat idiotic but mostly healthy way to work out the aggression I was feeling more and more as the days stretched on.  Cara and Pop just watched, making sure I didn't get in over my head, and once I was finished being stupid we would move on with them walking behind me, giving me my space.

More than once I toyed with the idea of just losing one of those fights.  What if Anja was dead?  What if Layla and Melody were?  Could I even bear finding any of them if they weren't _all_ there to be found?

I made my way to the engine and sat down next to Pop.   "I just know...they're out there.  I can feel them.  I can hear her."

He nodded, not saying anything.

 

 

We left the train running on its slowest speed so someone else could use it the way we did.  It had been a much needed rest and we took to the road again, feeling a little better about things.

But the signs left behind by other travelers were telling us the camps were moving, and each time we thought we were getting closer, the next sign told us they were farther away.

We had a destination now, though.  It was time to head east.

_Phoenix._

 

 

_To be continued..._

 


End file.
